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The holiday season may be the best time of year to look forward to but as a business owner do you find that your social media activity spikes just at the same time as you’re heading away from the office? It’s a typical scenario and often the busiest time of year when other team members are requesting time off too, you’re looking forward to spending time with the family – and you’re wondering how you’re going to keep up with your online marketing.

We know that social media doesn’t take a vacation, so how do you manage both sides of the coin and enjoy your holidays whilst knowing that your social channels are all up to date? Often when businesses are looking at what they can cut back on during the holiday season, marketing is one of the things that gets dropped. However your marketing is still a vital and essential part of any business and helps to keep the business sustained all year through. Dropping it can have bigger implications later on in the year.

Here’s our 7 tips on preparing for the holiday season

Be prepared in your online marketing when it comes to the holiday season

 

Get ready with a social media calendar, now!

This time of year means that there’s much more to juggle, so planning ahead makes perfect sense. Using a calendar will help to see what content needs to be created (it can be harder to visualise when it’s not written down or laid out in front of you).

We love our own Social Media Planner, it gives us the perfect space to plan ahead, to write in notes as we think of them and to organise and plan goals and targets. All of these come together to form part of your online marketing plan.

2020 Social Media & Business Planner

A calendar is also good for dates that you know are coming up, national awareness days, events that are important to your business and anything that you know is imminent. Put it on the calandar and once it’s all there, you can think about how it’s going to look and feel on your social channels.

 

Work with local businesses

It doesn’t have to all be about you and your business, if you know you’re stepping away from the office for a while, why not tap into someone else’s resources? You can promote or share stories from local businesses, charities & worthy causes, friends or family businesses. It’s a great way to involve your local community and for people to know that you care about what’s happening around you. It also helps with raising your profile in the community.

 

Curate content

As we (should) know, social media marketing should not be all about self-promotion. People will get very bored very quickly and switch off – resulting in your audience diminishing. There is a way to keep content pumping through and keeping your audience engaged – with curated content. This means that you are sourcing relevant content that you can use on your channels that will give your followers extra resources to read, learn from, engage with and much more. Headline: You are not the only expert in your field! And there is no point in wasting time trying to compete all the time. Use industry experts to help your cause, to provide value to your customers and to give even more inspiration to the people engaging with your channels. You only have to go online to find relevant articles or images – plan and add these into your content calendar.

Here’s a great read from Buffer: How to Schedule Social Media Content for Next Week, Next Month, and Next Year

 

Create social media content in advance when it comes to your online marketing and going away for the holiday season

Get others involved

When you create content on the hoof and quickly, you’re doing all the work; the content, the image creation, the thought-process. However, if you get others involved, you may gain a different perspective, ideas and initiatives that could have great results for your marketing and for your business long-term. If you’ve got a team, ask them for ideas and thoughts on what they think your audience would like to see and hear. If you’re a solo business owner and do create all your own content, why not ask people that are interacting with your business what they would like to hear about. Alternatively, you could ask a friend or family member to take a look over your social profiles and to give you an idea or suggestion on what they think may be a good read.

 

Create a theme

A nice way to show that things may be a little different for a season is to create a theme and have everything during that time fall into that theme. Not only does it give a refreshed look and feel to your content, but it shows that you’re trying something new and changing your plan for that season. The summer can be the perfect time for a theme change: think sun / sea / sand and how you can brand your content around a summer emphasis.

This can be applied throughout the year at different holiday seasons, like Christmas or new year: a branded theme can run straight through all that you produce.

 

Run a competition or promotion

The last thing you want to happen is for your content to flop while you’re away and this is where a competition or promotion could be the perfect tool. Set up a promotion that will last through your time away, with the winner being announced after your return.

Competitions always generate engagement, so while your promotion is getting interaction, your page is also gaining in momentum and engagement. To take it one step further you could promote User Generated Content, this is of course free advertising and will help with generating content throughout your holiday season – Ask them to tag or share your content, if someone loves what they see, they will share it.

 

Schedule ahead for paid advertising

Paid advertising needs to have just as much care and attention that organic social media posts. If you’re looking at continuing in paid advertising during your time away from the office, ensure that you have your ads pre-approved prior to you going away. This means planning in advance and setting up Facebook Ads for example in plenty of time for them to go through the system. If tweaks need to be made, have you given yourself enough time to make the adjustments? If this is something that you’re not sure on, make sure you gain expert advice. You could waste a lot of money if you leave your paid advertising running without setting it up correctly to start with.

Are you using social media for your freelance business?

A holiday season needs to be enjoyed and looked forward to. It can be quite stressful to put everything in place to cover this time, but utilise all resources around you, tap into colleagues or friends and always do as much in advance as possible. Of course you will still need to engage with those who are interacting with your page but this is much easier to do from your mobile if everything else is set up and running automatically. (Or hire a VA to cover your engagements during this time)

What scheduling tool do we recommend? There are so many to choose from but for ease of use and costs effectiveness, we love Hootsuite. You can have up to three profiles with the free account and it’s very simple to use. If you’ve got any other scheduling tool suggestions, we’d love to hear them!

 

It’s also worth thinking about outsourcing your online marketing during busy seasons. Using a digital agency means that you can completely let go and know that your marketing is in good hands while you’re putting your feet up and taking some well-earned relaxation time. The time and energy it takes to plan and schedule everything in advance, being active on the channels while you’re away and ensuring that everything is working properly, can be balanced out by outsourcing to a reputable agency to cover it all for you. If you’d like to know more about working with an online marketing agency, we’d love to chat with you and discuss your options. Your business success is our success – and we’re here to make your marketing as smooth and effective as possible. Get in touch and let’s talk strategy.

In the meantime, why not download our Awareness Days calendar to put some of those engaging dates in your diary. It’s free to download 😊

 

Get your FREE copy of our social media awareness days for 2020 - download now!

 

 

 

 

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